The statements in this section merely provide background information related to the present disclosure and may not constitute prior art.
Surveillance of geographic borders, as well as of large, fixed terrestrial based facilities such as buildings, military bases and manufacturing facilities has been growing in importance. At the present time there is particularly strong interest in performing surveillance of the borders of the United States, and even more particularly the U.S. border with Mexico. However, the U.S./Mexico border stretches more than 2000 miles, and thus real time surveillance poses significant cost and implementation challenges.
The precise locations chosen for the sensors that are to be used for monitoring purposes are typically chosen by engineering judgment using a specific perimeter line that is to be monitored. Typically the perimeter line closely, or in some instances identically, tracks the geographic border line. To fully cover a large geographic perimeter boundary such as the U.S./Mexican border with sensors such as radars and cameras placed at spaced apart points along the border would require an inordinately large number of such devices. Covering the entire U.S./Mexico border may require thousands, or even tens of thousands of such sensors or devices. Such an implementation quickly becomes economically infeasible, not to mention the significant challenges that are encountered with the on-going maintenance of thousands or more of sensors or cameras. Complicating this further is that a geographic border line, the U.S./Mexico border line being just one example, often runs over deep ravines, steep hills and dense forests. Thus, the complex border topography makes such a border difficult, if not impossible, to cover with a reasonable, limited number of sensors.
In various parts of the world, the border between neighboring countries also often runs through a mountainous region. Mountainous regions impose significant challenges when trying to lay out a plurality of sensors. This is due to the complex topography of such regions. Typically, previously developed surveillance systems employed in mountainous regions have required large numbers of sensors, many of which end up covering very small sections of the border area being monitored. In some instances this has made border protection through a mountainous region economically infeasible.